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Thursday, July 02, 2015

He was pressing in the 9th. He also reacted better than any pitcher I’ve ever seen lose a no hitter.

Major league hitters don’t swing and miss as often you may think. When they swing, they put the ball in play 41 percent of the time, hit a foul ball 37 percent of the time and swing and miss just 21.6 percent of the time, or about one of every five swings.

Which helps tells us about the type of stuff that Cleveland Indians pitcher Carlos Carrasco had Wednesday night against the Tampa Bay Rays. ...

Rumors and reports, especially out of New York, continue to swirl around Tulowitzki, who will make $20 million this season on a multiyear contract that takes him through 2020. With the Rockies floundering in last place, Tulowitzki seems the most valuable trade chip to gain rebuilding pieces for the future.

But Bridich was quick to keep the spotlight on Story and not Tulowitzki.

In a surprising move, the Twins optioned first baseman/designated hitter Kennys Vargas to Double-A Chattanooga after Wednesday’s 2-1 loss to the Reds. The Twins will make a corresponding move before Thursday’s game, and they are expected to call up top prospect Miguel Sano, according to a source familiar with the team’s decision.

Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez says his long layoff was a life lesson, even if it was lousy for his career.

Now he’s back, saying he’s a better person for having made the taxing, tedious recovery from Tommy John surgery. He’ll pitch for the first time since May 9, 2014, when he faces the San Francisco Giants on Thursday.

“I’ve been waiting 13 months,” said the 22-year-old Fernandez. “If I’ve learned something, it’s how to be patient at my age.”

Wright was in uniform with the team early last month for three games in San Diego, at which time he told reporters he unequivocally expected to return this season. Wright has been visiting with Watkins every Monday, at which time the doctor and patient review a checklist and a workout is prescribed for the upcoming week.
Wright said he was told early on that surgery wouldn’t be an option — unless he was careless in his rehab and the condition worsened.
“From the moment I was diagnosed ...

Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Now, McCain is pretty famous, and not just in the Washington sense. He was, after all, the Republican nominee for president in 2008. That generally puts your face and biography in front of a lot of the nation.

But apparently 2008 was a really long time ago, or perhaps parts of that bio didn’t quite stick. Like, you know, the fact his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and he was taken prisoner. Or the fact that he was captured with fractures in both ...

In 1998, around 20 Venezuelans were playing in the MLB. In 2014, they numbered almost 100.

In those 16 years, Santana and Félix Hernández won three Cy Young Awards between them; Cabrera won the Triple Crown and was twice named MVP; Ordóñez, Altuve, Cabrera and Carlos González won six batting titles; García, Santana, Hernández and Aníbal Sánchez had the lowest ERA during seven different seasons; and Francisco Rodríguez smashed Bobby Thigpen’s saves record.

Poor Jim Leyritz was in left field. Leyritz is not, was not, and never would be, a leftfielder. Injuries and general incompetence had forced the Yankees to experiment, and they were in the Diet Coke and Mentos phase of the experiment. It was Leyritz’s fourth game in the outfield in the majors, and he had just 55 chances in the outfield in the minors. He was a 26-year-old rookie with the kind of athleticism you would expect from someone who wasn’t ...

Los Angeles Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto, so infuriated with his manager, Mike Scioscia, has packed up his bags and may never come back.

Dipoto, whose relationship with Scioscia has been rocky for years, reached a boiling point Monday that had him clearing out his office and telling employees that he was resigning, a high-ranking Angels front-office member told USA TODAY Sports.

The Angels have not confirmed Dipoto’s resignation, which was initially reported by ESPN.com, and Dipoto ...

Moreno has really boxed himself in on this one. He may as well name Scioscia the GM because it’s pretty clear Dipoto’s replacement has no real power.

The tension between the GM and manager dissipated when the Angels won 98 games last season and made the playoffs for the first time since 2009. But as I wrote Monday, meetings on Friday and Sunday—the first between Dipoto, Scioscia and his coaches; the second also involving the players—sparked fresh discord.

So right now –– just to take one example –– Salvador Perez has 11,666,785 votes for catcher. What does that mean? It’s like light years or grains of sand on the beach, just number numbers.

But having fans vote is the way leagues like to run All-Star balloting nowadays, instead of being old-fashioned and letting the choices be made by people who actually know something, people we dare call experts.

And then in 2013 I got the call that, in retrospect, I had spent the previous two decades working to get. The Chicago Cubs contacted me and asked if I would be interested in interviewing for an analytics position in their front office.

Let me rephrase that: The Chicago Cubs wanted me to work for them.

Let me reframe that one more time: The Chicago Cubs, run by Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein, who had already won two world championships and ended an 86-year ...

An interview with Alex Patton and Peter Kreutzer, two pioneering Roto experts.

To follow up on that, you used to play in the pre-Internet age, when people read newspapers and networked with friends in other cities for relevant fantasy information? Do you still enjoy the game with all of the information just there for anyone to get in a matter of minutes?

Alex: I miss the networking. But I still read newspapers! Better enjoy that while I can, I guess.

“In the midst of that one inning that Eduardo had the other day, it was me and Wade [Miley] sitting down in the batting cage watching TV and balls are getting hit hard. I think the one that set us off was the Chris Davis slider. It was a good slider away and he stayed on it and went the other way. You have to expect 96 or 97 and you’re staying back on a slider on a full count, left on left? It didn’t register. So we went in there and looked at it and found something that was not really ...

Marty McHale has invented a new wrinkle in delivery. He pours a cupful of water on his right knee just before he starts for the rubber, and when he wants to pitch he rubs the ball on the wet spot and gets it good and smooth so that his grip is better. The other teams have protested against the trick, but the umpires see no other way to stop it.

Seems like the exact opposite of what you’d want to do in order to get a good grip, but he was a big ...

With the game tied 4-4 in the 14th inning, Hernandez made a base-running gaffe that nearly cost his team the game. After a one out single by Chris Stewart, Hernandez entered the game as a pinch runner. He did not do his job very well.

The next batter, Josh Harrison, sprayed a double to center, and that’s when things got confusing for Hernandez.

Center fielder Rajai Davis nearly got to the ball, diving at the last second. The ball deflected off Davis’ glove, ...

Some smart person, I believe it was political columnist and baseball guru George Will, said that politics is a lot more like baseball than football.

What he meant is that if you lose a few football games the season quickly becomes unsuccessful. But if you lose even a lot of baseball games, you can still win the World Series. NFL teams play 16 regular season games. Major League Baseball teams play 162.

In politics you can lose a lot of legislative battles and public policy fights, and still be ...

On Monday, a FOXSports.com report stated that “emotions simmered” amid a series of meetings revolving around the front office’s belief that the coaching staff was doing an inadequate job of relaying scouting information to players. In those meetings, occurring this past weekend, at least one coach “responded heatedly” to Dipoto and Pujols issued “a pointed rebuttal” to the fourth-year GM.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

An international player is eligible to sign with a Major League team between July 2 and June 15 of next year if he is 17 or will turn 17 by the end of the first season of his contract. Additionally, any prospect who is already 17 or older and has not previously signed a Major or Minor League contract, resides outside of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico and has not been enrolled in a high school or college in the U.S., Canada or Puerto Rico within the previous year is eligible to sign ...